Fusion-io announced a flash card for workstations that more than triples the capacity over its previous model, and for the first time Hewlett-Packard is preparing to ship workstations with the drives.

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Fusion-io announced a new version of its ioFX workstation flash card that has more than three times the capacity of its predecessor.

The new Fusion-io ioFX card is now available with 1.6TB of capacity, in addition to the original 420GB version.

Fusion-io's ioFX flash card.

The card is intended for applications such as video editing and computer-assisted design, as well as 4K and stereoscopic video production.

For the first time, Hewlett-Packard is planning to ship the ioFX card in its Z820, Z620 and Z420 Workstations. HP had offered the ioFX cards as an after-market add-on.

The new ioFX card has a top speed of 1.4GBps for reads, and 1.1GBps for writes. The previous version of the card had the same write speed, but a 700MBps read speed.

"There are so many more [flash] chips configured in parallel we naturally get a much higher write performance," said Vincent Brisebois, Fusion-io's director of visual computing. "But, usually write performance is not the focus of workstations."

The 1.6 TB Fusion ioFX will be available this summer. Its list price will be disclosed upon release of the drive. The 420GB ioFX card, which has been available since last year, has a retail price of $1,995.

Brisebois said the company hopes to keep the new card's price under four times that of the current card.